The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Laminates may generally be considered an alternative to traditional building and finishing materials, such as stone, wood, granite, or brick. Various methods exist to produce laminates that imitate traditional building materials such as high pressure laminates (HPLs) and low pressure laminates (LPLs). A persistent problem is the resulting laminates may not possess the realistic look and texture of the traditional building and finishing materials. One problem that leads to a non-realistic look is that a true high definition image is extremely difficult to produce. Conventional laminate methods have only one layer of thin water based ink in its print paper layer. The ink layer may bleed, be easily worn through, or may crack. UV printing, commonly used in the signage industry, is capable of creating a high definition image. However, typical UV inks used in digital printing have been hard and brittle, thus limiting a digitally printed product's ability for thermofoiling. In addition, UV cured inks traditionally had very limited stretch, less than 250% for the most flexible inks. Membrane pressing of a printed thermofoil requires a minimum ink stretch greater than 250% otherwise the ink will crack in the thermofoiling process, especially on the edge where stretch can be greater than 500%. Conventional laminates typically use a protective melamine saturated paper overlay. Although the paper becomes relatively clear when placed under high heat and pressure, it can have a milky appearance and different refractive indexes that may further contribute to a fake look.
While some other high quality laminate boards may tend to visually look like their intended natural counterpart, the laminate texture readily reveals that they are fake. Typical texturized synthetic laminates have random textures. These random textures may not align with the printed image. For example, laminate given a wood like texture may have a visual depiction of a wood knot. The wood like texture over the image of the wood knot however, does not match the surface texture characteristic of a wood knot. One prior approach shows a method of forming a textured surface on alternative materials by mechanical embossing. However, the process of accurately registering an embossment (forming a press plate) that matches the desired texture of the laminate image has proven extremely difficult. Furthermore, even if an embossment is accurately registered, it has been difficult to accurately maintain the alignment of the registered embossment and the laminate image in order to emboss with near perfect alignment. Even if an embossment could be registered to match the desired texture and easily aligned with the image, mechanical embossing is limited in the depth (0.012 inches) of the texture on the laminate due to cracking of the surface during processing. Some HPLs may be produced with an overall greater thickness to avoid problems with cracking, however, the greater thickness detracts from the laminate's post-formability. It is often not possible to post-form these laminates to the relatively tight radii of conventional kitchen countertop profiles or other demanding post-forming applications.
In addition, conventional laminate processes use formaldehyde, which has been classified as a known human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and as a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a workable method of fabricating alternative building or finishing materials, without formaldehyde, where the alternatives have the realistic look and feel of traditional products. More particularly, there is a need for a true high definition laminate, that is generally or substantially perfectly aligned with a texture that matches the image, and has high clarity and differential gloss levels.